The European Commission has just announced an agreement that English will be the official language of the EU – rather than German (the other possibility). As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement, and has accepted a 5-year phase-in of new rules which would apply to the language and reclassify it as EuroEnglish.

The agreed plan is as follows:

In year 1, the soft c would be replaced by s Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard C will be replaced by ‘k . This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan now have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ph is replaced by f This will reduse fotograf by 20%.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent ‘e’s in the language is disgrasful and they should eliminat them.

By year 4, peopl wil be reseptiv to lingwistik korektions such as replasing th with Z and w with v (saving mor keyboard spas).

Not too many, I mean: Spanish, English, German, and then I spoke modern Greek better than English once. I made a film in modern Greek, but that’s because in school I learned Latin and ancient Greek, so from modern Greek to ancient Greek it’s not that far. And I do speak Italian and I do understand French but I refuse to speak it. The last thing you could ever do … you can only get some French out of me with a gun pointed at my head.